Best DNP Programs

San Francisco metro

Best DNP Programs In San Francisco 2026

3 accredited institutions in the San Francisco metro, with school-wide average graduate tuition from $12,264 to $57,326 a year in state.
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Key Takeaways

  1. 1

    3 accredited institutions, drawn from 2 municipalities. This guide counts the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA metropolitan area rather than the city limits, so the pool is wider than the city name suggests and every campus in it is inside one commute.

  2. 2

    1 public, 2 private, and the cheap end is public. University of California, San Francisco publishes $12,264 in-state, against $29,070 at the next option up. Residency is the lever here, and that figure is one school's published year rather than a typical cost: it leaves out fees, insurance and what reaching a clinical placement costs.

  3. 3

    Output is concentrated in one school. Samuel Merritt University conferred 46 of the 78 DNP awards recorded across this metro, with University of California, San Francisco next at 24. A number that lopsided says where the cohorts and the placement relationships are, which a ranking position does not.

  4. 4

    1 of 3 reach you at a distance. That many carry the federal distance-education flag, which covers taught content and never the supervised practice hours. Ask for the number of on-campus days and the months they fall in.

The Public-Private Gap Is The Price Story Here

School-wide average graduate tuition in this metro, which excludes DNP add-on charges, runs from $12,264 a year in state at University of California, San Francisco to $57,326 at Samuel Merritt University, about 5 times apart, in the 2023-24 federal figures.

The one public institution publishes $12,264 in state, and the two private institutions publish $29,070 to $57,326. Out of state, the public rate rises to $27,366.

Samuel Merritt University conferred the most DNPs in the metro in the reporting year, 46, and charges the highest graduate rate here.

These are average tuition figures for full-time graduate students across each institution, not a DNP price. Some doctoral programs add a tuition differential on top, so ask each school for its DNP rate per credit before comparing.

How This Ranking Is Scored

Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the 3 institutions on this page and to nothing else.

  1. 50%

    Published in-state graduate tuition

    Institution-level. Average annual tuition for full-time graduate students, 2023-24, from IPEDS. Not a DNP per-credit rate, not including program differentials, and not net of aid.

  2. 35%

    Established program

    Program-level. DNP conferrals in this CIP and award level in the reporting year, saturating at 25. Above that a program scores full marks and gains nothing further for size.

  3. 15%

    Institution-wide undergraduate completion

    Institution-level and undergraduate. The IPEDS 150%-of-normal-time rate for first-time, full-time bachelor's students.

Nothing is imputed. A program that does not publish a figure is scored on the ones it does publish, with the remaining weights renormalized; below 2 published figures it is listed without a position rather than ranked on a single number. Accreditation is a condition of appearing at all, not a factor that earns points. What the rubric cannot see.

The Best 3 DNP Programs In San Francisco, Ranked

Ordered on the same three published figures the state guides use: in-state tuition, annual conferrals and completion rate. One row per institution, not per federal filing.

Each card shows what the institution publishes.

Ranked 1 of 3

University of California-San Francisco

San Francisco, CA

98.5 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Public
  • Professional practice doctorate

UCSF was first in the University of California system to run a post-master’s entry to the doctorate, and that route is seven quarters, hybrid, combining online learning with selected in-person immersions. The bachelor’s entry route is hybrid too, with the majority of courses online. Quarters rather than semesters is the detail to plan around, because a quarter calendar moves faster and the breaks fall in different places from the schedule most employers assume. This is a graduate health sciences campus of about 3,000 people with no undergraduate college attached, and against that size it confers nursing doctorates at one of the higher rates in the country.

Tuition
$12,264
In-state
Tuition
$27,366
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
24
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 100
  • Established program 96.3

Visit University of California-San Francisco →

Ranked 2 of 3

Samuel Merritt University

Oakland, CA

41.2 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Professional practice doctorate
  • Offered online

Samuel Merritt is a health sciences university rather than a campus with a nursing school attached, and its doctoral output against its size is among the highest in the country: about 1,900 students in total and forty-six nursing doctorates a year. The routes are counted in units rather than years. The post-master’s doctorate needs a minimum of 30 semester units and the family nurse practitioner doctorate needs 65, so what you already hold roughly halves the work. Graduation also turns on finishing the clinical hours set for your specialty track rather than one figure for the whole degree, which means the family and psychiatric mental health routes carry different totals and the track page is where those live.

Tuition
$57,326
In-state
Tuition
$57,326
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
46
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 0
  • Established program 100

Visit Samuel Merritt University →

Ranked 3 of 3

University of San Francisco

San Francisco, CA

36.9 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Professional practice doctorate

3 DNP tracks at this institution, Family nurse practitioner, Psychiatric-mental health NP, Registered nursing (general). Ranked once, on the largest.

San Francisco runs its doctorate at three locations, San Francisco, Sacramento and Orange County, which is unusual for a private university and means a California applicant may have a campus within reach without moving. Two clinical routes run, family practice and psychiatric mental health, and both are filed federally as campus programs rather than distance ones, so the location question here is real rather than nominal. The regular application deadline is 15 May across all three sites. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the highest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and it is one rate whatever state you live in.

Tuition
$29,070
In-state
Tuition
$29,070
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
8
Completion
70%
Undergraduate
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 62.7
  • Established program 0

Visit University of San Francisco →

What This Guide Counts As The San Francisco Metro

This guide follows the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan statistical area. Two institutions are in San Francisco and Samuel Merritt University is across the bay in Oakland. San Jose is excluded and it is the exclusion most likely to surprise: it is a separate metropolitan area in the census delineation even though the region is spoken of as one.

Municipalities Included

  • San Francisco, CA
  • Oakland, CA

Deliberately Not Included

  • San Jose, CA The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro, separately delineated, despite sitting in the same commercial region.
  • Fremont, CA Named in the metro title, but no institution in the accredited dataset reports it as its city.
  • Los Angeles and San Diego, CA The other end of the state. Los Angeles has its own guide.

Choosing A DNP Program In San Francisco

What studying in the San Francisco metro changes. The questions that apply wherever you study are on the national ranking page.

What University of California-San Francisco charges depends on where you live

It is the one public institution in the San Francisco metro publishing both rates, at $12,264 in state against $27,366 out of state, a difference of $15,102 a year. Residency is set by the state under its own rules rather than by where you sit to watch a lecture, so an out-of-state applicant should treat that gap as the first question rather than a footnote.

A field of 3 is small enough to contact all of it

Samuel Merritt University, University of California-San Francisco and University of San Francisco are the accredited doctorates in the San Francisco metro, which is few enough that writing to every one of them is a morning's work rather than a project. It is also the fastest way to learn what no program page prints: who secures your clinical placement, what the school charges if a doctoral project runs past its term, and which tracks are open to new applicants this cycle. Against a field this size, a reply beats a rubric.

The California board of nursing decides the license, not the diploma

No doctorate confers authority to practice or prescribe. That authority comes from an advanced practice license the state issues and the national certification behind it, which is why a DNP-prepared and a master's-prepared nurse practitioner on the same license prescribe the same things. What varies between states is the licensure requirement itself, so take it from the board rather than from a program page, and take it early: several programs want an active license in the state where your practicum will happen rather than wherever you hold one now, and licensure by endorsement runs to months. What the degree does and does not grant sets out the distinction.

Samuel Merritt University carries the distance flag

1 of the 3 measured institutions in the San Francisco metro carry it. That flag records only that taught content can be delivered at a distance. It says nothing about campus days, and nothing about the supervised practice hours, which happen in a building with a preceptor present wherever you enroll. Ask for the number of on-campus days and the months they fall in, because that is what you hold against a roster. Online DNP programs ranks the distance-flagged field nationally.

A metro is a commute, and California is the field

This page covers the institutions inside the San Francisco area because a campus you can reach on a weekday is a different proposition from one you cannot. It is a narrower field than the one you are actually choosing from: DNP programs in California carries every accredited institution in the state, and for a program you would attend at a distance the metro boundary means nothing at all.

Who Licenses You In The San Francisco Metro

Practice environment from AANP’s own state fact sheets, read 2026-09-08; AANP last revised the classification 05/2026. Boards from the NCSBN member directory, read 2026-09-08.

California
Restricted Practice
California Board of Registered Nursing

Every institution on this page sits in California, so one board licenses all of them and AANP classifies the jurisdiction as restricted practice. The school does not grant practice authority and never has; the license and the certification behind it do.

The board detail, the full AANP definition and the license verification route are on the state guide: DNP programs in California . AANP is reading state statute rather than issuing a federal designation, and statutes move each legislative session, so confirm with the board before you rely on it.

What The Work Pays In The San Francisco Metro

BLS OEWS, May 2025, metropolitan area cut for San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA, read 2026-09-10. BLS classifies by occupation, not by credential: there is no DNP wage series, and every figure here covers everyone in the occupation regardless of which degree they hold.

OccupationMedian, San Francisco metroEmployedNational median
Nurse Practitioners29-1171$219,0803,110$132,300
Registered Nurses29-1141$186,61041,750$97,550
Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary25-1072$84,730700$80,250

One occupation is missing from the table above: nurse anesthetists. BLS suppresses metropolitan cells independently per occupation, usually where the employed count is too small to publish without identifying an employer, so a blank means the figure was not released for this metro rather than that nobody does the work here. Nationally the median is $236,590.

Nurse practitioners in the San Francisco metro have a median of $219,080, across about 3,110 of them, $86,780 above the national $132,300.

A median is the midpoint of what people in the occupation are paid, so half earn less and half earn more; it is not a starting salary and not an offer. The metropolitan cut is a different survey area from the state one, so these figures will not reconcile with the state page and are not meant to. How BLS defines these areas .

Shortage Areas, And The Debt Relief Attached To Them

HRSA designated primary-care Health Professional Shortage Areas, read 2026-09-08. These are state counts, not metro ones.

California, designated areas
576
California, of those rural
232

These figures cover California in full rather than the San Francisco metro specifically. HRSA publishes designations at the level of the individual area, and rolling them into a metro needs a county crosswalk this guide does not hold, so the state count is what is shown and it is shown as a state count. What follows from it still applies here, because eligibility never attached to a jurisdiction in the first place.

Both federal loan repayment routes open to advanced practice nurses require working at an approved site inside a designated area, and the area’s score sets funding priority when applications outrun the money: Nurse Corps Loan Repayment Program and NHSC Loan Repayment Program. HPSA primary-care scores run 0-25; funding priority for loan repayment follows the score.

In a metro that is mostly urban the practical consequence is that eligible sites are a smaller share of the employers you are likely to interview with than the state count suggests, and they are usually federally qualified health centers, public hospital systems and university clinics rather than private practices. Whether a particular employer counts is settled by the program rather than by the designation, so check the site before you take the job.

HRSA’s shortage-area data portal maps the designations to the address. Paying for a DNP covers the routes that do not depend on where you practice, and the state guide breaks the designations down further: California.

Studying From Outside The San Francisco Metro

1 of the 3 accredited doctorates in the San Francisco metro carry the federal distance-education flag, which leaves most of the local field expecting you in the room and makes an out-of-state program a real comparison rather than a fallback. Either way it turns on one thing this site cannot answer for you.

Authority to enroll a distance student is set per institution and per state, and the federal flag this page counts records delivery rather than permission, so only the school can answer it. Ask two things before tuition enters the conversation: whether the program can enroll a resident of the San Francisco metro this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical hours near where you live.

Which San Francisco Option Fits Your Situation

Each of these routes to a published figure or a named institution. None is a recommendation, and none is a statement about whether a school will admit you.

If the published price is what decides it: University of California-San Francisco

The lowest published in-state rate among San Francisco's publics, at $12,264 a year. An annual rate, not a program total, and it assumes residency.

If you are moving to San Francisco: settle residency before you apply

University of California-San Francisco publishes a $15,102 annual gap between its in-state and out-of-state rates, the widest of the 1 San Francisco public publishing both. Start with the registrar, not admissions.

If you already hold an advanced practice credential: Samuel Merritt University

Samuel Merritt University publishes a post-master's route, the shorter way in when your master's already carries supervised hours. Ask how many transfer; the ceilings differ sharply.

If you cannot relocate: Samuel Merritt University

Samuel Merritt University carries the federal distance-education flag. The flag covers taught content only. Supervised hours still happen near you, and campus days are the school's to set, so ask for the count and the months.

What The Figures On This Page Are

Tuition is the institution’s published annual graduate rate, not a per-credit price and not a program total. Awards are conferrals in the reporting year. Completion is the federal undergraduate rate, the weakest input in the model, and no federal series reports DNP completion. Wages are the metropolitan cut of the federal survey, a different survey area from the state one. How this site scores programs sets out each input and its weight in full.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many DNP programs are there in San Francisco?

3 institutions in the San Francisco metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 2 municipalities.

What counts as the San Francisco metro on this page?

The San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: San Francisco, CA; Oakland, CA. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in San Francisco than online?

Neither is reliably cheaper. Published in-state tuition at a public institution is usually the lowest figure available to someone who qualifies for it, and distance programs charge a single rate to everyone regardless of where they live. Which comes out lower depends entirely on whether you hold in-state status somewhere, so compare the published rates rather than the format.

Do these figures include fees and clinical costs?

No. Every tuition figure on this page is the published rate an institution reports to the federal government, which excludes fees, health insurance, textbooks and the travel a clinical placement can require. Treat it as a floor for comparison between institutions rather than a total cost of attendance.

Related Pages

Sources

  1. 1 CCNE Directory Of Accredited Programs Which institutions hold accreditation.
  2. 2 IPEDS Published tuition, conferrals and completion.
  3. 3 Metro Definition The San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA metropolitan statistical area, rolled up to the municipalities listed above. Institutions are matched on city and state.

Every federal figure on this site is read from the administering agency’s own page, never from a secondary aggregator, and the reading date is recorded beside it.

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Schools pay to appear in these listings. They are separate from our rankings, which no school can pay to change.